Possible problem w/ Pinnacle Studio (DVD stops during playback)

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I just made a great 1.5hr movie using Pinnacle…at least it looks/sounds great in the Pinnacle software. Due to the length I had to burn it on a Dual Layer DVD.

It is comprised of various photos and videos, and after about a minute and a half of playback on my Sony DVD player the DVD just stops playing. It happens to be during one of the videos I added to the montage, but I’m not sure if that has any importance. If I tell my DVD player to jump to the 45 min mark it will go there and continue playing….though I can’t fast forward past the 1:25 mark.

Does anyone know what could be wrong? Could this be due to the Dual Layer DVD, or just some bad compiling in Pinnacles process?

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Hi JRock!

Just a few questions to try to help sort this out. Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that will play properly on the Sony DVD player? Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that you burned to a dual layer DVD, and will they play on the Sony? Have you tried to play the DVD on a different player? And will the DVD play OK on your computer?

John

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Hi JRock!

Just a few questions to try to help sort this out. Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that will play properly on the Sony DVD player? Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that you burned to a dual layer DVD, and will they play on the Sony? Have you tried to play the DVD on a different player? And will the DVD play OK on your computer?

John

Great questions…some of which I was going to post just now!

This is the first time in a while that I’ve used the Pinnacle Software, so its the first time for all of what I’m doing on the current process. Yesterday I tried playing it on a different computer and it worked, so my assumption is that the problem is with the DVD Players I’ve tried it on are both old (~10 years) and can’t handle the DL. My parent’s have a relatively new DVD player (2 yrs) and I plan to try it out on that one tomorrow.

I’ll update this thread when I know, but I’m guessing/hoping its the DL technology. Its kind of funny…I had a similar problem 10 years ago when I tried this by making VCDs but not all DVD players back then were able to play VCDs.

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JRock,

That’s what I was hoping that you would say, i.e. an old DVD player. My guess is that you’re likely correct.

I’ve never used Pinnacle, I utilize Premiere Elements, but I believe that each works similarly. I know what it’s like to put hours into making a movie and then finding that PE has mucked it up, and all of that time and effort was wasted. For what it’s worth, I find it safer to render the finished movie to the hard drive, and then use a third party app to burn it to DVD. That way, at least, if the burning process goes awry, I can take another shot at it without having to re-do everything. Please let us know how you come out with your parent’s DVD player.

John

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my assumption is that the problem is with the DVD Players I’ve tried it on are both old (~10 years) and can’t handle the DL. My parent’s have a relatively new DVD player (2 yrs) and I plan to try it out on that one tomorrow.

JRock,

That’s what I was hoping that you would say, i.e. an old DVD player. My guess is that you’re likely correct.

I’ve never used Pinnacle, I utilize Premiere Elements, but I believe that each works similarly. I know what it’s like to put hours into making a movie and then finding that PE has mucked it up, and all of that time and effort was wasted. For what it’s worth, I find it safer to render the finished movie to the hard drive, and then use a third party app to burn it to DVD. That way, at least, if the burning process goes awry, I can take another shot at it without having to re-do everything. Please let us know how you come out with your parents’ DVD player.

Thanks,
John

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Hi JRock!

Just a few questions to try to help sort this out. Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that will play properly on the Sony DVD player? Have you made other movies using Pinnacle that you burned to a dual layer DVD, and will they play on the Sony? Have you tried to play the DVD on a different player? And will the DVD play OK on your computer?

John

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So their “new” DVD player is about 5 years old, and I ran into the same problem. The only difference is that after about 20 seconds of thinking the DVD player jumped to the 40 min mark and started playing more, whereas the rest of the players just stopped playing.

So far the only place I can get it to play is on my wife’s Apple iBook. It wont work on any other computer INCLUDING the one it was created on (which is about a year old, the newest of all PCs I own).

My next step is to try cutting the project in half and writing the first half to a standard DVD to see if it works.

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Hmmmm. You still have an anomaly- and I like anomalies! Why would the DVD play on your wife’s iBook and not on your 1 year old PC? What’s different? That question would be enough to keep me up late trying to figure out. :confused:

DVD players can be quite picky about what they will and will not play, and the dual layer DVD could certainly be an issue, but I have yet to find a DVD that wouldn’t play on my 4 year old desktop. If you’re interested, and haven’t already, consider givingVLC Player a try on your DVD. It’ll play just about anything. But none of this really matters as it probably doesn’t help figure out why the DVD won’t play on standalone DVD players. It sounds like the authoring of the disk was corrupted during either the rendering process or the burn, either of which would give a DVD player fits. Your last thought about cutting the project in half is worth a try. Interested in your results.

John

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Sorry it took me so long to reply, but I tried out a few options (and took a little vacation myself). The first attempt I took at trying out to work around the problem was to divide my movie into two “standard” DVDs. The DVD players all played these DVDs, however I ran into a new problem….some of the music was lost and loud static replaced it.

Before trying to figure the static problem I found out my parents planned to buy a new Blue-ray/DVD player. We just set it up and it played the dual layer DVD! Great news….up until the same loud static problem presented itself (at a different point the standard DVD had it).

I’m thinking about trying to re-record the DVD with a higher audio output, but I wasn’t sure if this would fix it. Have you heard of this problem before?

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Hi JRock,

You certainly are persistent; I figured that you had given up on this project. As I re-read this thread, I came up with two new questions. A few posts back you wrote that the dual layer DVD would play on your wife’s iBook. Did the whole thing play on it without any of the static that you are now experiencing? Also, do you have the original project saved to your hard drive? Not a rip of the DVD, but the actual original project file?

John

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As johjue said at one point, I also write the disc to the hard drive (with Pinnacle) and then use another program to actually burn the disc, usually ImgBurn. I stopped trusting Pinnacle for that back on version 12 (maybe 11?) which had a bug in the disc writing process that I didn’t know about for some time.
Splitting task like that is also a good way of helping you to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies because you can play the files from disk as well and if they play ok there or if they have some of the same problems…you have two lines of investigation to help you in sleuthing the culprit.

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I think I heard static when it played on the computer, but I’ll confirm tomorrow (my parent’s have the DVD).

I wrote Avid to see if they could diagnose the problem and they came up with some next steps too (though they first tried to deal with the Dual Layer thing even though I said it was not a concern now that I have a new DVD Player). First they wanted me to redo the entire project (yeah, right…like I want to spend another 20+ hours to do this), then they suggested I turn off the mic (which I don’t have). Finally they said I should delete the Auxiliary files. I will do this, but do you think it will be the source of the problem?

Because it takes a few hours to render/burn, and I don’t have time tomorrow to do this twice, I’m thinking about deleting the Aux files then writing to disc. I will then try out ImgBurn (I think its free)…I hope this fixes the problem. Should I worry about using a lower quality audio output? Do you have any other suggestions for me before I (possibly) waste another DL disc?

I assume I’ll want to render as a DVD (save to computer) rather than an AVI, MPEG, etc…..is there a way for me to view the .VOB files (or whatever they are saved as) to see if the static is there before burning?

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JRock,

If you still have the original project, I’d go ahead and render to DVD (save to disc), and try to play the .vob filesusing the open source VLC Player. I checked before writing this and VLC did play a .vob file for me (there are other players that will also do this). At this point I wouldn’t mess with the audio output quality or the auxiliary files. I would encourage you to be patient given the amount of time and work that you have already invested. My guess is that either your original project is somehow corrupted, or something went awry in the burning process. If you do the above and the files play OK, then go ahead and burn to disc. If the static remains, go ahead and try the other adjustments, as you won’t have anything to lose. ImgBurn will be a good choice for burning to disc if there is no static (make sure that you understand the burning choices). Obviously, if the static remains or there are other problems, don’t waste your time burning to disc. Please let us know what you find.

Good luck!
John

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Sigh….so I hear the static in the VOB files too, at least this time I didn’t waste a disc.

I’m going to try to delete the Aux files as suggested by AVID, as well as change the Audio Compression from MPA to Dolby Digital 2-Channel (I figure I would try this before trying PCM compression).

I’ll check back later to see if this worked.

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JRock,

Sorry to hear that; at least you’re not out of options yet. Hang in there and keep your fingers crossed!

John

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